A typical liquid crystal display (LCD) panel has a plurality of pixels arranged in a two-dimensional array, driven by a data driver and a gate driver. As shown in FIG. 1, the LCD pixels 10 in a LCD panel 1 are arranged in rows and columns in a display area 100. A data driver 200 is used to provide a signal indicative of data to each of the columns and a gate driver is used to provide a gate line signal to each of the rows. In a color LCD panel, an image is generally presented in three colors: red (R), green (G) and blue (B). Each of the pixels 10 is typically divided into three color sub-pixels: red sub-pixel 20R, green sub-pixel 20G and blue sub-pixel 20B, as shown in FIG. 2. A data line 221 is used to provide the data signal to the R sub-pixel in a column, a data line 222 is used to provide the data signal to the G sub-pixel in the same pixel column, and a data line 223 is used to provide the data signal to the B sub-pixel in the same pixel column. The data line 224 is used to provide the data signal to the R sub-pixel in the next pixel column. A gate line 231 is used to provide the gate line signal to all sub-pixels in a row and a gate line 232 is used to provide the gate line signal to all sub-pixels in the next row. In a transflective LCD panel, each of the color sub-pixels may be further divided into a transmissive area and a reflective area.
A typical LCD panel is fabricated with two substrates. As shown in FIG. 3, the LCD panel has an upper substrate 12 and a lower substrate 18 and a liquid crystal layer disposed between the substrates. On the upper substrate 12, a transparent, electrically conducting layer 14 is provided as a common electrode. In each of the color sub-pixels 20, an electrically conducting layer is disposed on the lower substrate 18 as a pixel electrode. The LCD panel also comprises an electronic component layer 17 for controlling the voltage between the common electrode and the pixel electrode. The common electrode is usually connected to a common ground or a common voltage source COM.